Rory O’Connor’s timing couldn’t be much better. We’re in the midst of a presidential campaign where the very notion of Truth-with-a-capital-T seems to be at risk: think Barack Obama’s alleged Muslim-ness or Sarah Palin’s alleged rejection of the Bridge to Nowhere. And now O’Connor — the veteran journalist and media critic and alum of the Phoenix, the Real Paper, Boston magazine, the Globe, WGBH, and WCVB — has returned to Boston from New York for a fellowship at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, where he’ll be pondering the future of journalistic truth and trust. An edited excerpt of his recent conversation with the Phoenix follows; for a fuller version, visit the “Don’t Quote Me” blog.

What is the goal of your study at Harvard?
How do we know that what we see and hear is really true? That goes both ways. There’s a high level of distrust between the citizenry and the professional journalism priesthood, whether they’re on the right or the left. And the professionals are up in arms, too. They don’t trust citizen journalism at all; they’re afraid of people getting their news and information from viral e-mails; they know things are changing rapidly throughout the mainstream media; they feel, quite rightly, like they’re under assault. What I’m going to be looking at is trust, journalism, and social networks, and the role they can play in enabling people to get news and information they can trust. Obviously, that’s really vital to having a fully functioning democracy. And one could argue we don’t have one at the moment, or that we’re right on the edge of not having one.

So are John McCain and the GOP being savvy in telling people, “don't get your information from the media because they’re not trustworthy”?
Attacking the media hasn’t worked so well in the past, but I think it's working better now because of personalization — my Yahoo, my news, my Republican Party, my Democratic friends. And as people move away from mainstream transition belts, everything becomes media. You’re getting pushed directly from the campaign, or seeing their information on YouTube — that’s media. You’re mashing it up and making something new: photoshopping and putting Sarah Palin’s head on top of somebody in a red, white, and blue bikini, holding a giant gun, which also wasn’t true. That’s media. The other thing I want to look at is the mainstream media playing in fields of Facebook and MySpace. What are they doing? YouTube just partnered with the Pulitzer Center; CNN has a new thing going with Digg; Reuters built a bureau in Second Life. Nobody knows if any of this stuff’s going to work, but they know something’s happening.

Are we approaching a point, in the media and across the broader culture, where the notion of truth is in trouble? Is this a point of peril?I think it’s a big point of peril. But I also think that social networks are potentially the answer to that and the antidote to that.

Arise and hail "At first blush, Thomas Hardy seems an unlikely figure to associate with Revels." With due respect to Revels artistic director Patrick Swanson's program statement, this Hardy fanatic of almost 50 years begs to differ.

Crimson tied Barack Obama's presidential campaign was successful in part because he was able to cleverly negotiate and navigate the battles that have plagued the United States the last few years.

Cheer of a black planet It's hip-hop week at Harvard University. And while that statement is far less ironic than it would have been 15 years ago, it's still relatively humorous.

Dancing in a new direction The 100th birthday of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes prompted the expected centennial tributes in Boston: a "Diaghilev's Ballets Russes 1909–1929: Twenty Years That Changed the World of Art" symposium and exhibition at Harvard University in April, and a "Ballets Russes 2009" festival this month.

Debating the Middle East muddle US military aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan is being wasted and should be redirected to the police and moderate non-violent groups working for education and the rule of law, according to two Middle East experts who spoke Sunday at the Community Church of Providence.

Philadelphia Story The local-media story line of the moment is the push by Stephen Taylor — Milton resident, Yale media lecturer, and former Boston Globe executive VP — to recapture the paper his family ran for more than a century, a goal he's pursuing with the backing of (among others) his cousin Benjamin Taylor, the former Globe publisher.

Boston rat rampage Residents say that if you jam a leaf blower in the earth virtually anywhere in Allston, furry bottom feeders will be blown out of every crack and hole in sight and rain down like unsavory screeching meatballs. North Enders joke that something similar would happen if you detonate a Parmesan wheel in an alleyway off Hanover Street.

Wanting more After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.

BULLY FOR BU! | March 12, 2010 After six years at the Phoenix , I recently got my first pre-emptive libel threat. It came, most unexpectedly, from an investigative reporter. And beyond the fact that this struck me as a blatant attempt at intimidation, it demonstrated how tricky journalism's new, collaboration-driven future could be.

STOP THE QUINN-SANITY! | March 03, 2010 The year is still young, but when the time comes to look back at 2010's media lowlights, the embarrassing demise of Sally Quinn's Washington Post column, "The Party," will almost certainly rank near the top of the list.

RIGHT CLICK | February 19, 2010 Back in February 2007, a few months after a political neophyte named Deval Patrick cruised to victory in the Massachusetts governor's race with help from a political blog named Blue Mass Group (BMG) — which whipped up pro-Patrick sentiment while aggressively rebutting the governor-to-be's critics — I sized up a recent conservative entry in the local blogosphere.

RANSOM NOTES | February 12, 2010 While reporting from Afghanistan two years ago, David Rohde became, for the second time in his career, an unwilling participant rather than an observer. On October 29, 1995, Rohde had been arrested by Bosnian Serbs. And then in November 2008, Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were en route to an interview with a Taliban commander when they were kidnapped.

POOR RECEPTION | February 08, 2010 The right loves to rant against the "liberal-media elite," but there's one key media sector where the conservative id reigns supreme: talk radio.